A problem exists of users illegally copying fonts from either a printer or client computer file system to another printer or client computer file system. Currently, Hewlett-Packard offers a font security product referred to as a Secure Font Box®. In essence, this product is an external device that has flash memory for font storage, logic that detects the presence of a valid user identification card, logic that downloads fonts from the card to printer memory, and logic that removes the fonts from printer memory upon removal of the user identification card from the Secure Font Box®. This device currently costs several hundred dollars, and requires fonts to be stored on the external device. The device provides logic that parses data streams sent to the printer to detect the presence of font selection strings that reference fonts it is managing. This can negatively impact printing performance, even for jobs that do not use fonts protected by the device.